ALTERNATIVE WINCHES

We're checking out this pair of wheel-related alternatives to the electric winch.

Sooner or later we all get bogged and it's normal then to rely on a winch, a tow or a snatch strap extraction to get us out. Vehicle wheels have many times the power output of a small electric drum winch.

The idea of using spinning wheels as winches isn't new: military and agricultural vehicles used hub winches back in the 1930s
and there were commercially available kits for recreational 4WDs in the 1960s and 1970s.

All these hub winches used a removable winch drum design that either bolted in place, or clipped over specially designed wheel nuts.

The winch rope or cable was attached to the drum and the spinning wheel became the drum drive unit.

The hub winch market went quiet for a few decades, but the invention of high-strength synthetic rope has given the concept a new lease on life.

Bush Winch is a Western
Australian based company, producing a hub winch for popular 4WDs.

This hub winch design uses two drums - one for each opposite-side wheel and can be used going forward or rearwards. Each drum attaches to a wheel hub,
using specially-shaped wheel nuts.

The drums can be used alone, on front or rear wheels, or in conjunction with rope-guide hub attachments that allow steering while winching.

Bog
Out is a different type of wheel winch that wraps around a spinning tyre. It is a ladder-shaped harness designed to turn a wheel into a winch. A Bog
Out harness can be used singly in some situations, but a pair makes a more powerful extraction tool.

As with traditional wheel winches Bog Out works for forward or reverse recovery, by using the front or rear wheels.

The Bog Out system was developed and tested in the Northern Australian tropics; is compact and economical; and can double as a tow rope.

Because the point of recovery effort is at the contact patch of the tyre tread the Bog Out system tends to lift the vehicle up out of a bogging as
it pulls forward or rearward.